August 8 Update

Glad you're enjoying it! I do my best to select tracks, but unfortunately many are purchased from specific packs, so I can't distribute them freely.

Sierra Lee

A bit late to the party, but I just got to Mythin's Island and HOLY FUCK I am LOVING this soundtrack! And actually, now that I think of it, the version of the tower's theme that played during the Anak's event at the Second Gathering was also stupendous. Wish I could download them or something.

kinky-kong-keith

Hi ho, hi ho, back to bugfixing I go. I suppose in the second case it's better to protect players from themselves. Though it's possible to check the location of an event, it would require running a parallel process, which can be unstable. I'm just going to prevent the player from rolling the snowball over there.

Sierra Lee

We've got a couple trivial TLS bug reports from the wiki forums: 1.) In Premium Steel in "Old" Yhilin, (011,014) has alternate dialogue for Megail and Aka's Routes, but (019,014) doesn't. 2.) In the Endgame Caverns in Yarra's Route, it is possible to trap the party and "soft-lock" the game by moving the snowball at (033,029) to (035,022/023). The reporter, "thisgamething" notes that "There is a patch of ground where the boulder wont cross, probably to prevent exactly this, but its a wide cavern and I just... went around." I'm not sure what this means if he isn't talking about the spot where the crystal used to be stops the snowball from going further south. Assuming #2 is intentional, which I suspect it is, it might be cool if there could somehow be event code that caused the game over screen when the snowball enters (035,023), assuming that is possible.

DukeLeto7

Thanks for the feedback, glad you liked this one.

Sierra Lee

Finally got to watch the preview with music. That was well mixed. This is actually a trailer I would take interest in on steam if I saw it and knew nothing about the creator or their previous games.

Runcible Technician

Thanks for leaving feedback! I'll try to look into the lingering issues further, but it's a bit of a relief to hear that the recent version was stable. That said, I'm glad to hear you enjoyed your taste of OEA. ^-^

Sierra Lee

Load screens for the OEA demo were a bit longer than I expected, but didn't find they were so long as to be distracting or really affect the experience. I think I was getting... 5 seconds-ish on some load screens? A bit longer on stuff that seemed bigger like map transitions, usually something like 3 seconds whenever a load screen popped up for a battle (which didn't always happen). Got two bugs throughout - first was the game crashing at the same point Jens Mikli had above (return to Bangsville), second was an odd one - the screen went entirely black when I was menuing inside of the Red Arena waiting room, where you go to enter fights. I was able to go and save with the screen black, and refreshed to get rid of the black screen, so the game was running during it; unfortunately I don't remember what exactly might have caused it. (I was slightly annoyed by losing progress to forgetting to save, but I figure autosaves are probably hard to add in, especially this late in the process; that's more a personal issue where without big glowing save points, I forget to save frequently in games that require it.) Overall, as someone looking at the game for the first time: very enjoyable! I've played TLS and not watched the OEA trailers yet, so I expected a twist soon into the game but didn't know exactly what it would be; the execution for it was very well done! Had the feeling I've had with TLS before where I hit the current end and go "Wait, no, that's the end? I wanted to keep going!" (In a "I just want more of this because it's so good" way, not an expectant "how is there not more way") Very very much looking forward to the full game!

Jade

Huh, I hadn't thought about that being an ambiguous line. I'll think about it, and thanks for your feedback!

Sierra Lee

I'm really digging the OEA trailer, a clear improvement over the original. Struggling to find anything to criticize. Maybe rephrase the "over 200 maps" line? It IS rather impressive, but it probably appeals more to a game designer than a consumer, and if I hadn't been following the process on Patreon I likely wouldn't have known what it meant, and if it was a lot. Congratulations on another book launch! Honestly, you write faster than I can keep up with reading. I'd have to skip out on 2/3rds of the other stuff I read to keep up, lol. And I truly can't wait for 0.58. Hearing it's to be your primary focus now, is very reassuring

DankPotatoes

I really appreciate you taking the time to test the demo, especially since it seems that it does have some bugs! Unfortunately, I can't track down some of these exactly. The last report (Fenris dialogue) I can pinpoint... and unfortunately, the game isn't doing anything complex there. That means there will likely be unpredictable slowdowns for everyone, which is useful information. The flicker of the character bust is the one I'm least concerned with, but if you want to give more information about which line happens before/after, I can take a look. The null pointer error that appears only once... if you recall the smith's exact line, I can check further, but otherwise I'm afraid there might be just a bit of instability built in. At least I can warn players about it in my introduction. Is your comment about progress so far, or did you get to the end screen otherwise?

Sierra Lee

OEA demo crashed with a "width" null pointer exception during the return to bangville right after having to repudiate the smiths claim to a MASSIVE TOOL. No issue when repeating the section. Aside from that minor issues like there was a brief flicker of the character bust right after Hood comes to the rescue. Also weird slowdown that leaves the textbox and screen blank for a long time around "Mister...Wolf?" Fenris dialogue.

Jens Mikli

Thanks for the kind words and the answers to my questions!

Sierra Lee

Congrats on another book launch! I haven't picked up any just yet but we'll see what happens when I finish the rest of your games. The OEA trailer looks really good! It is cool to see the progress from the initial draft to now. You had specific questions though: 1) Black screen transitions worked just fine for me. I'm sure the page flip transitions could work. I actually had to go rewatch it because they didn't stick out to me (in a bad way). 2) The feature text doesn't bother me in the trailer and might hook anyone who stuck around that deep into the trailer. The info is impressive and is worth stating somewhere for sure. I could go either way though. Currently I don't think it is actively bad. You definitely deserve a day to relax. I hope you're in a position to do so soon!

Grim8P

I'm glad to hear you enjoyed your replay! Though the work has in some ways been defined by the month to month experience, a satisfying final experience is my end goal.

Sierra Lee

I had fallen behind in TLS updates, the last thing I recalled doing was finishing the 2nd Gathering but not delving deep into an 'optimal' path. I replayed from the beginning to remind myself of the plot, reexperience the game as a whole product and see how the new art changes things. It was great fun. The art really brings something to the experience and the past few updates have been impressive on multiple levels. I like the 'puzzle' fights from the past few updates and the most recent version was excellent on a story and a mechanics level. Looking foreword to the future.

Trevor

I'm glad you got through the intro, and I appreciate your support! I'll continue to move toward the official release for OEA.

Sierra Lee

Thanks for the feedback!

Sierra Lee

Thanks for the feedback! I think the editor was aiming for a specific time due to the music, but I agree it wouldn't need to be that long otherwise.

Sierra Lee

A few months ago my friend recommended me to check OEA. I haven't had any contact with any of your games before and I have to admit that for the first few minutes of watching this whole happy bimbo crap I thought my friend was mocking me. How glad I am that I "lasted" a little longer, because I would have missed so much fun and I would never discover your other games

I'd probably be a sucker for the page flip transitions, that just sounds too cool for OEA, but I'm not sure how much work for you that would cause. Yeah, just watched the trailer again, love the page flip for transitions.

Darthjake

About OEA trailer, it is quite good, the text should stay,in my opinion, they summarise what we can espect from the game. The thing I would change is reducing the number of map shown and the number of battle scene shown. I think it make the thing a little longuer than necessary. I Hope you will be able to relax for some day. You deserve it.

Mycroft

I hope you can take a day off and transition to 58.0 real soon as well. Ending it on a cliffhanger just makes me more excited to see it end.

JJS